This Substance is So Sensitive it Immediately Explodes At the Lightest Touch

Boom! Even if a feather dropped on or a mosquito landed on or like a heavy piece of dust managed to get on top of nitrogen triiodide, an immediate dark purple explosion happens. It’s because nitrogen triiodide is so unstable that it detonates whenever it’s disturbed, no matter how slightly it was. Here’s it firing off in slow motion.

Three iodine atoms cluster around one side of a nitrogen atom. Being crowded around one end causes something called bond strain as the atoms repel each other in a small space. The result is that the molecule is prone to falling apart, explosively.

This article originally appeared on Sploid, a Gizmodo blog of delicious brain candy